Autumn Nor’easter

An investigation by federal regulators and a utility group found that downed trees rather than transmission system outages were largely to blame for widespread power outages during a freak October snowstorm in the Northeast last year.

An independent consultant says Connecticut’s largest utility wasn’t prepared for a record-setting snowstorm in October and its failure to put repair crews in place before the storm delayed efforts to restore power.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has told his state agency commissioners to help in an investigation into why hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses had no power for more than a week following a fierce pre-Halloween snowstorm.